Knights of the Crystal Blade men charged with rape and assault after wedding each others' young daughters.
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| Samuel Shaffer pleaded guilty and was sentenced to prison for 26 years to life. © James Dobson/The Spectrum/AP |
By Bryn Lovitt, Rolling Stone
In Utah, the Knights of Crystal Blade – a radical, fundamentalist Mormon
offshoot – is under investigation for the abduction and assault of
underage child brides. Authorities have charged Robert Shane Rowe
– a man from California who was allegedly promised a child bride – with
one count of child sodomy. Last December, an unbelievable kidnapping
bust exposed the cult's founding members, 34-year-old Samuel "the Seer"
Schaffer and follower John Coltharp, also 34, for not only kidnapping
their own children, but "marrying them off" between the two. Now there
appears to have been a third adult involved.
The investigation began after Coltharp's ex-wife, Micha Soble, went
to the police claiming her former husband had kidnapped their children.
The cops issued a statewide Amber alert, which led to the raid of a
derelict compound just outside the small town of Lund, Utah. There,
Schaffer and Coltharp allegedly had hidden their four daughters inside
of freezing, 50-gallon water barrels. Initially, it was believed that
Schaffer and Coltharp were the only members of the group involved in the
abuse charges, which include multiple counts of child rape and sexual
assault. However, as Prosecutor Kevin Daniels pointed out,
the alleged involvement of Robert Shane Roe from California suggests
the Schaffer and Coltharp were actively recruiting more members into the
fold.
Shortly after Roe connected with Coltharp and Schaffer over social media, according to a statement Daniels made to The Salt Lake Tribune,
he was encouraged come to Utah for a baptism and promised Schaffer's
five-year-old daughter as a child bride. The victim only recently came
forward with the alleged abuse, which, via statement from prosecutor and
Sanpete County attorney Kevin Daniels, played out similarly to previous
charges. "Like two of the other individuals involved in Knights of the
Crystal Blade," Daniel told KSLTV, "[Roe] has committed sexual acts upon children, under the auspices of marriage."
According toThe Denver Post,
Schaffer and Coltharp, are both former members of the Church of
Latter-Day Saints, and adhere to an extreme belief in polygamy as well
as an imminent doomsday. Newsweek reported that
the two men met in a Facebook group lamenting the LDS's 1890 decision
to ban polygamy, and from there created a now-defunct online forum
outlining Schaffer's prophetic visions, including an apocalyptic Muslim
attack.
Soble, Coltharp's ex-wife, toldThe Denver Post
that her husband had previously expressed a desire to "live off the
grid," and moved the family to Spring County, Utah, where he and
Schaffer could built a compound in preparation for the end of the world.
The "compound," however, described in a signed affidavit as
"deplorable," was little more than a remote sprawl of abandoned trailers
and shipping containers out in the desert.
Since September of
last year and up until the raid, Coltharp left the couple's four
children there in a double-wide trailer with his parents, an older
couple who, despite the unlivable conditions including subzero
temperatures at night, believed
heavily in the practice of alternative medicine, Soble told The Denver
Post. While Coltharp's two sons and their grandparents were spotted as
soon as dogs and helicopters touched down on the compound, the daughters
were nowhere to be found.
Both Coltharp and Schaffer managed to
evade the search for several hours until an anonymous tipster claimed to
have seen Schaffer walking several miles outside the compound. Once
arrested, Schaffer told authorities where to find two of the four
underage girls in the barrels, though he was reluctant to give up the
remaining two's location. Ultimately, they were found hidden and
lethargic in yet another trailer several miles away. Coltharp, however,
was arrested at his home under suspicion of custodial interference and
brought in for questioning, his children still at the compound.
The
girls, all four under 10 years old, were rescued and flown to area
hospitals as police charged their fathers with first-degree felony rape
of a child, second-degree felony count of child abuse, obstruction of
justice, child kidnapping, and in a surprising first for the state of
Utah – home to notorious polygamist ringleaders like Warren Jeffs – child bygamy.
Schaffer
entered a guilty plea in February and was sentenced to 26 years to life
in prison. Coltharp faces trial next month for lewdness with a child,
obstruction of justice and child bygamy. The trial will pick up on July
9th. Roe also faced a count of child sodomy,
which carries the possibility of life in jail. As of Monday afternoon
he is not yet in custody, though there is a warrant out for his arrest.
"These are extreme individuals with extreme beliefs that believe the end of the world is coming," Daniels told the Idaho State Journal. It was the police who raided the compound who "prevented those little girls from dying. Or repeating a Waco-style shootout."
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